This historical overview of Springfield is from Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future, Wayne W. Wood, 1989, Jacksonville, Florida.

In 1823, the Spanish government validated John Hogans' claim to the Springfield tract, known as "Hogans' Donation." It was purchased in succession by three of Jacksonville's most prominent early settlers: William G. Dawson, Colonel John Warren, and Isaiah D. Hart. Although Hart sold the tract in 1846, the original parcel remained intact until after the Civil War when 54 acres were carved out to become the suburbs of Hansontown and Franklintown.

In 1869, half the remaining Hogans' Donation was divided and offered for sale by John H. Horton, one of Jacksonville's first professional real estate developers. Jacksonville merchant Calvin L. Robinson is credited with naming the new development Springfield because of "a spring of good water located in the field through which West Fourth Street would now pass (near Broad Street)." Norton's 1871 real estate guide showed that development in Springfield had begun but that the population was sparse.

Springfield Suburb

This is a tract consisting of about 300 acres of high level land, just north of Jacksonville, and from the river a distance of about half a mile. This land has been laid off in blocks and lots, with broad streets and avenues running at right angles through it, 418 feet apart, thus making the blocks to consist of just 4 acres each, which can be subdivided to suit purchasers.

Great activity is now manifested in this direction; some eight or ten substantial dwellings, of handsome architectural design, are now being erected, while the streets are being opened, graded and improved as fast as possible...

This place presents great advantages as a location on which to make one's home. The lands are cheap and one can secure ample room for garden and ornamental grounds for a small amount, which in our rapidly growing place, will soon greatly increase in value. It is high and healthful. None but respectable people can purchase these lots as the trustees refuse to sell to others...No other suburban addition to the city is so centrally located or so contiguous to the business portion of the city.

Springfield's proximity to Downtown would become a major factor later, but during the 1870's Springfield grew very slowly. The first major construction was the waterworks, located in the southern part of Springfield along Hogans Creek. Begun in 1879 and completed a year later, the pumping station became the major water source for the city of Jacksonville.

In May 1882, the Springfield Company was formed by several prominent Jacksonville citizens, including S. B. Hubbard, Jonathan Greeley, and William McDuff. They acquired the remaining six hundred acres of the Hogans' Donation, and coupled with the extension of the trolley line out Main Street (then known as Pine Street), brought about the first real surge of development in Springfield. The streetcar line was built in 1882 from Bay Street to Eighth Street by Mr. B. Upton, who leased it in 1884 to Mr.G. A. Backenstoe. With visions of a profitable resort at the terminus of the line, Backenstoe build a skating rink, dinner hall, and restaurant. When profits failed to materialize, however, the line was sold to the Springfield Company. With the street railway serving Springfield exclusively, the suburb's population grew to 356 by 1886. In 1887, a new Jacksonville charter brought Springfield and seven other suburbs into the city limits.

To revive tourism, the Jacksonville Board of Trade in 1887 organized "The Sub-Tropical Exposition ." Constructed on the waterworks grounds, the main pavilion was a grandiose structure 325 feet long with exotic towers soaring as much as 100 feet above Main Street. Its opening season in 1888 was a great success, but its popularity diminished over the next several years, paralleling Jacksonville's decline as a tourist resort.

As a residential center, however, Springfield had arrived. By 1893, there were nearly 100 substantial residences, mainly clustered along Main, Hubbard, Market, and Laura streets, between Phelps Street and Fourth Street. Brown's 1895 Book of Jacksonville described Springfield as being "exclusively for white persons" with residences "of a superior character at once artistic and ornamental." The architecture reflected mainly the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles, and a number of these Victorian residences still remain, particularly along Hubbard Street.

During the latter part of the 1890's, Cuba's war of liberation against Spain attracted many sympathizers in Jacksonville. Duval County Sheriff Napoleon Bonaparte Broward was a prominent Springfield resident (and later Governor) who gained wide notoriety by illegally running guns and men to Cuba. When the U. S. entered the war in April 1898, Jacksonville citizens successfully petitioned the Army to designate their city as a staging area for troops. On May 22, 1898, the first train load of soldiers arrived in Jacksonville, which became headquarters for the Seventh Army Corps and a major training center during the Spanish-American War. Within two weeks over 8,000 soldiers were housed in a large tent encampment in East Springfield, between First and Eights streets along Ionia Street. General Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of General Robert E. Lee an commander of the Seventh Army Corps, christened it "Cuba Libre." Lee, who made his headquarters between First and Second streets, went on to become the military governor of Cuba after the Spanish-American War ended.

Typhoid fever broke out among the soldiers within three days after the first arrival. By the end of June, with over 12,000 troops in Springfield, typhoid had spread to epidemic proportions. During June and July, 18 soldiers died of typhoid fever. Local leaders tried to suppress the truth about the disease for fear that the Army, along with its thousands of free-spending men, would abandon the city. New regiments arriving in late June camped in Panama Park, while 6 regiments arriving in August chose Fairfield. By the end of October the Springfield camp had been abandoned, but the disease had spread to other camps. At the peak of the epidemic in September, more soldiers were hospitalized in Jacksonville on a single day than the 1,662 Americans wounded in overseas combat during the entire Spanish-American War. Of the soldiers stricken with typhoid in Jacksonville, 362 died, as compared with 385 U. S. troops killed in combat during the war. Luckily, only about 60 local citizens died from typhoid during the epidemic.

Three years later, catastrophe struck the city again. As the fire on May 3, 1901, burned most of the downtown area, thousands of people escaped the blaze by fleeing to Springfield. Along a natural firebreak formed by the marshy area skirting Hogans Creek, a bucket brigade of Springfield citizens helped to keep the flames from spreading in their direction. The fire advanced beyond Hogans Creek at only one point, just east of Main Street, destroying Hammatt's Wood Yard. After the fire, reconstruction of the downtown section began almost immediately and the building boom quickly spread to surrounding areas. Many of the homeless refugees decided to move to the relative tranquility of Springfield. A December 1901 article noted that Springfield was leading in new suburban construction.

The next two decades produced Springfield's greatest period of residential growth. By 1909, the neighborhood boasted a population of over 8,000, and emerging subdivisions such as New Springfield and North Springfield pushed the concentration of residential growth north of 10th Street. This latter subdivision was developed by the Springfield Realty Company, owned by former mortician George W. Clark, who at this same time was developing Panama Park. During this period, the only paved street in Springfield was Main Street, together with small sections of Hubbard and Laura streets. Trolley tracks lined with palm trees bisected Main Street's two brick-paved automobile lanes, leading all the way to 12th Street.

Over two-thirds of the residences presently found in Springfield were built before 1921. The houses constructed there from 1900 to 1920, were primarily of Bungalow, Prairie, and transitional Queen Anne/Colonial Revival styles. Most of the homes in Springfield were not designed by architects, but were simply concocted by their builders, often using designs copied from available plan books. Ironically, Jacksonville's most outspoken architectural theorist, Henry J. Klutho, chose Springfield for early experimentation with the avant garde Prairie style in several buildings on Main street.

Klutho also was involved in Jacksonville's abortive motion picture industry, building his own movie studio on West Ninth Street. Preceded by Thanhouser Studios at 27 East Eighth Street and Klever Komedies Studios at 32 East Ninth Street, Klutho Studios was the last Springfield studio in operation when it finally closed in 1922.

The development of Springfield was barely completed when it began to decline in the last 1920's. The Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance passed by the city in 1925 classified the entire Springfield section as "Business A," resulting in the depreciation of residential property values. City Planning Engineer George W. Simons described Springfield's problems in May 1931.

Many former residents, during the past four or five years, have left Springfield to live in other areas where property is restricted. Tenement dwellers have entered Springfield and the property, generally speaking, is depreciating and when this state starts its rate of progress is rapid. Poorly placed business has sprung up at scattered points and with each new business the sphere of effective depreciation widens. There are still in this area many beautiful homes of old families and working people--homes representing a life time of labor and saving, which are constantly faced with the thoughts of adjacent filling stations or stores. Why shouldn't these people be protected? Why shouldn't the beauty and distinctiveness of Hubbard Street, Silver Street, Boulevard, and Perry Street, as well as that of several cross streets, be preserved?

A half century later, these same ills still plague Springfield, having been accentuated by the changing demographics and general urban decay that since the 1950's has caused our nation's inner-city neighborhoods to decline. A local preservation organization, Springfield Preservation and Restoration(SPAR), was founded in 1975 to counteract this trend. In 1979, SPAR successfully led a campaign to down-zone Springfield, which became the first neighborhood in Jacksonville to change most its commercial zoning back to residential. Other organizations, such as the Greater Springfield Business Association and Springfield Neighborhood Housing Services, have greatly contributed to efforts to restore this once proud neighborhood. In 1987, Springfield was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as Jacksonville's second Historic District. With thousands of vintage houses, proximity to Downtown, and recent escalation of property values, Springfield is destined to re-emerge as one of Jacksonville's successful residential neighborhoods.

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Description of the Springfield District

The Springfield Historic District, located just north of downtown Jacksonville, is composed mainly of wood frame residential buildings and a much smaller number of masonry commercial, religious, educational, and civic structures. Its concentrated physical development began about 1882 with the formation of the Springfield Development Company and accelerated after the fire that destroyed much of downtown Jacksonville in 1901. Contributing buildings in the district date from about 1885 to approximately 1930. The majority of the houses are wood frame vernacular structures, but there are some examples of late nineteenth-century revival and romantic styles, including Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, and the Stick style. Twentieth-century types include Prairie School, Bungalow, and Mediterranean.

The boundaries of Springfield are well defined. Hogans Creek lies along its south edge, and railroad lines are found on the north and east. Boulevard defines the western limit of the district where a later commercial strip abuts the earlier residential area. Contemporary with the overall residential area are two commercial strips along Main and Eighth Streets which join at the heart of the district. The district contains 119 city blocks in an area of approximately 500 acres, or slightly less than one square mile. Hogans Creek separates the residences of Springfield from the downtown business district. North of the creek few buildings rise above two stories and parks and tree lined streets are common.

The blocks of the historic district are laid out in a regular grid, with named streets running north and south and numbered streets east and west. Most of the blocks have alleys, usually arranged in an "H" pattern, although other configurations are found. A few streets retain their original brick pavers and granite curbstones, but the majority are now covered with asphalt and have concrete curbs. Sidewalks feature both the earlier hexagonal pavers and modern poured concrete sections. Trees lend considerable distinction to the neighborhood. Oaks predominate. Scattered throughout the neighborhood are such decorative elements as hitching posts, cast iron fences, rusticated concrete block walls and carriage stepping stones, testimony to the area's turn-of-the-century origins. There is, however, no great concentration of such elements.

Some additional commercial and industrial buildings are found along the northern and eastern boundaries of the district in conjunction with the railroad lines, and isolated commercial structures are found within the neighborhood. Schools, churches, multi-family residences and parks are found throughout the neighborhood. Although there are a number of modern intrusions along Springfield's main commercial arteries, these have not proved so numerous as to be overwhelming. Also, except for demolitions, the residential area remains largely unchanged, with relatively little post-1930 construction.

At the time the district was listed in the National Register, it contained 1,784 buildings fifty years old or older that contributed to its historical character. Of that number, 1,686 were classified as residential. Only 48 were commercial. The great majority of buildings, 1,595, were wood frame, and 201 were masonry. There were l,294 buildings of two stories in height and 10 three-story structures. The remainder were all one-story structures.

Contributing buildings were all fifty years old or older and retained enough of their original physical character to adequately embody the sense of time, place, and historic association normally required in establishing a historic district. These comprised 95 percent of all of the buildings in the district. The non-contributing buildings were either less than fifty years old and lacked exceptional significance or were more than fifty years old but retained little, if any, of their original physical integrity. These numbered five percent of the total.

The neighborhood did not experience a resurgence of construction during the 1920s, as did other residential sections of the city, and the "boom" bypassed the area since much of the land was already occupied, except in the area north of Eighth Street. Construction was, therefore, limited to the occasional vacant lot or those sites where older structures had been lost or required replacement.

There were 1,038 frame vernacular buildings in the historic district that possessed no discernible stylistic features, though in certain cases the decorative details may have been removed in later remodeling. Most of these vernacular buildings are two stories in height with a gable or hip roof. The wood frame buildings that retain their original fabric are generally clad with weatherboard or novelty siding or, in a few cases, wood shingles. In many cases, aluminum, vinyl, or asbestos siding have been applied to the exterior of houses. One-story porches and verandas are common, and there are some porches with upper galleries. There are a variety of sash and casement window types. Masonry vernacular buildings are generally brick or stuccoed and are either one or two stories in height. Most of these are commercial buildings with fixed glass storefronts. Few exhibit any ornamentation. Their roofs are usually the flat built-up variety with parapets on the street facade.

Although the majority of buildings in Springfield are vernacular, many others embody styles or architectural influences contemporary with the development of the district. The influence of the Colonial Revival, Queen Anne, and Prairie styles is particularly evident. Other minor styles are represented as well.

Springfield was for a time the home of Henry John Klutho, Jacksonville's most influential architect during the first years of the twentieth century and its leading proponent of the Prairie School. The house he designed as his own residence in Springfield was said to be the first in Florida to draw on the "modernist" architectural movements in America.

Beyond its architecture, the Springfield Historic District has other attractive physical features. The most prominent of these is the historic parks and structures which define the southern boundary of the neighborhood along Hogans Creek. Recreational facilities and parks constitute 30.91 acres of Springfield or approximately five percent of the total land area. The parks along Hogans Creek account for most of this acreage. Klutho (Springfield) Park comprises 17.47 acres and Confederate Park another 8.3 acres. Along the creek itself are the balustrades and bridges designed by Klutho in 1929. The remainder of the greenspaces in the district is constituted by small neighborhood parks and playgrounds.

SUMMARY: SIGNIFICANT CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SPRINGFIELD HISTORIC DISTRICT

Setting:

1. Entrance defined by Hogans Creek Improvements, bridges at Liberty, Market, Hubbard, and Laura Streets.

2. Parks, monuments, and greenspaces embodied by Klutho (Springfield), Confederate, and Waterworks parks.

3. Streetscape features such as brick streets, patterned sidewalks, tree lined streets, and granite curbing.

4. Grid-iron subdivision layout.

5. Uniformity of facade lines, narrow front and side setbacks, with a very tight street edge.

6. Small lot size (front footage of 50' or less) and dense development.

7. H-pattern blocks with alleys.

8. Oldest, largest buildings concentrated at southern end of district.

9. Commercial areas concentrated along Main/Eight street; other small commercial buildings throughout district.

10. Patterns of vacant lots: random, numerous on east side where demolition, deterioration is greatest.

Characteristics of individual buildings:

1. Height: 1-2.5 stories. Height generally uniform at the block level.

2. Width: narrow, generally 2-3 bays wide, resulting in vertical orientation of buildings.

3. Porches: common; generally one-story, full facade width, entrance porches.

4. Roofs: front-facing gable, hip, gambrel; secondary roof structures: dormers, cross gables, turrets.

5. Foundations: piers or continuous masonry.

6. Materials: horizontal wood siding; wood shingles; red and buff brick; some stucco; interlocking and barrel tile; metal roofing: embossed, crimped, standing seam.

7. Windows: Double-hung sash; some casement; art glass in Prairie School.

8. Styles and design influences: frame and masonry vernacular; Colonial Revival; Bungalow; Prairie; Classical Revival and
Queen Anne most common; other styles: Eastlake,

9. Decoration: jig-sawn woodwork frequently on porches, eaves; brick corbeling on commercial buildings; exposed structural elements on Bungalow, Prairie style buildings; patterned masonry on Prairie style buildings.

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